Alter Martinus

Today (October 15) in 1567 Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586) became superintendent of Brunswick. Chemnitz has been referred to as Alter Martinus, the “Second Martin,” because of the importance of his work for carrying on the proclamation inaugurated by Luther. The following are selections from his writings on the topic of The Holy Scriptures and the Writings of the Fathers:

“The apostles propagated the doctrine of the Gospel, received from Christ and explained by the Holy Ghost, during the first few years without writing, solely by oral tradition; soon, however, by the will of God, as Irenaeus says, they began to commit to letters and to comprehend in writings, not a contrary, not a different, not another doctrine, but that very same doctrine which they preached orally. … We shall place as it were in the very forefront the beautiful statement of Irenaeus which is found in the preface and chapter 1 of Book III, where he says: “That alone is the true and living faith which the church has received from the apostles and communicated to her children. For the Lord of all gave His apostles the power of the Gospel, and through them we also have come to know the truth, that is, the doctrine of the Son of God; to whom also the Lord said: ‘He who hears you hears Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me and Him who sent Me.’ For through no others do we know the plan of salvation except through those by whom the Gospel has come to us. That, indeed, which they then preached, they afterward delivered to us in the Scriptures by the will of God, that it should be the foundation and pillar of our faith.” This statement of Irenaeus speaks of the whole Scripture of the New Testament in general, whose authority, perfection, and (as we now say) sufficiency, he shows by the firmest of demonstrations. For that is beyond all controversy the only true and living faith which the primitive church received from the apostles and delivered to her children. But this faith was first conceived through the preaching of the apostles, which they themselves had received from the teaching of the Son of God. This doctrine of Christ and of the apostles, from which the true faith of the primitive church was received, the apostles at first delivered orally, without writing, but later, not by any human counsel but by the will of God, they handed it on in the Scriptures. What do we conclude? That this is the same doctrine which they had received from the Son of God, which they had preached orally, from which the primitive church had received the only true and lifegiving faith from the apostles and delivered it to her children. (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1971], pp. 79-81)

Irenaeus, Bk. 3, ch. 4, says that certain barbarian nations diligently preserved the ancient tradition without reading and writing, “believing in one God, the Maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is therein, through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who on account of His surpassing love toward His creation consented to be born of the Virgin, Himself through Himself uniting man with God; He suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rose again, and was received into glory; He will come in glory, the Savior of those who are saved and the Judge of those who are judged; and He will cast into eternal fire the corrupters of the truth and the despisers of His Father and of His advent, etc. If anyone would preach to these barbarians what has been invented in addition by the heretics, they would at once close their ears and flee far away. Thus, through the ancient tradition of the apostles, they do not give entrance to the extravagant fictions of the heretics, etc.” This is the true and ancient tradition of the apostles which does not hand down anything outside of and beyond the Scripture but embraces the summary of the whole Scripture. And in Bk. 1, ch. 10, Irenaeus similarly explains the apostolic preaching. He says: “The church, planted in the whole world to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and from their disciples this faith which is in One God, the Father Almighty, who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Ghost, who by the prophets preached the counsels of God, the Advent, and that birth which is of the Virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily ascension into heaven of the beloved Jesus Christ, our Lord, and His appearance from heaven in the glory of the Father, that before Christ Jesus, our Lord, God, Savior, and King, according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess Him; and that He will hold a righteous judgment on all; that He will cast into eternal fire the wicked spirits, both the angels who sinned and became apostates and the ungodly and unjust and wicked and blasphemous men; but that He will give to the righteous and just, who keep his commandments and persevere in His love, some, indeed, from the beginning but some from the time of their repentance, life and incorruption as a gift and that He will clothe them with eternal glory. When the church has accepted this preaching and this faith, though she is scattered throughout the whole world, she diligently preserves it, as though she lived in one house, and she believes these things as if she had one soul and one heart, and she preaches these things harmoniously and teaches and transmits them as if she possessed only one mouth. For although there are different languages in the world, nevertheless, the import of the tradition is one and the same. And the churches which were founded in Germany do not believe or teach differently than those which are among the Iberians or those which are among the Celts or those which are in the Orient or those which are in Egypt or those which are in Lybia or those which are situated in the middle of the world. But as the sun is one and the same in the whole universe, so the light and preaching of the truth shines everywhere and enlightens all men who want to come to the knowledge of the truth, etc.” This, therefore, is the apostolic tradition, this the true antiquity of the church, this the universal consensus. And all the things which we accept and confess are in agreement with the Holy Scriptures. (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I, pp. 240-42)

For we can affirm with a good conscience that we have, after reading the Holy Scripture, applied ourselves and yet daily apply ourselves to the extent that the grace of the Lord permits to inquiry into and investigation of the consensus of the true and purer antiquity. For we assign to the writings of the fathers their proper and, indeed, honorable place which is due them, because they have clearly expounded many passages of Scripture, have defended the ancient dogmas of the church against new corruptions of heretics, and have done so on the basis of Scripture, have correctly explained many points of doctrine, have recorded many things concerning the history of the primitive church, and have usefully called attention to many other things. And we long for this, that in the life to come we may see what we believe and hope concerning the grace of God on account of His Son, the Redeemer, as members of the true catholic church; that we may see (I say) the Son of God Himself, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and fathers, who held to the true foundation, and may enjoy intimate friendship with them to all eternity. Therefore we examine with considerable diligence the consensus of the true, learned, and purer antiquity, and we love and praise the testimonies of the fathers which agree with the Scripture. (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I, p. 256)

…we disagree with those who invent opinions which have no testimony from any period in the church, as Servetus, Campanus, the Anabaptists, and others have done in our time. We also hold that no dogma that is new in the churches and in conflict with all of antiquity should be accepted. What could be more honorably said and thought concerning the consensus and the testimonies of antiquity? Irenaeus writes to Florinus: “These dogmas, Florinus, have no sound meaning; these dogmas depart from the church; these dogmas not even the heretics would ever have dared to proclaim; these dogmas the presbyters who were before us and who were also disciples of the apostles have not handed down.” These things are from Eusebius, Bk. 5, ch. 20. But we confess also this, which we have not invented ourselves but have learned from the fathers: that we search out and quote the testimonies of the fathers, not as though the things which are shown and proved from clear testimonies of Scripture were either not certain or not firm enough in themselves or did not of themselves possess enough strength and authority unless also the consensus of the fathers were added; but the reason why they are quoted Augustine clearly explains in De peccatorum meritis, Bk. 3, ch. 7: “This I have mentioned not because we should rely on the opinions of any and all disputers as on canonical authority but that it may be clear that from the beginning until the present time in which this new thing has arisen this teaching about original sin has been guarded in the faith of the church with such great constancy that by those who treated the words of the Lord it was used as the surest way to refute other false things, rather than that anyone should have tried to refute it as false. Besides, the clearest and fullest authority for this statement lives in the sacred canonical books.” The same author says in De nuptiis et concupiscentia, Bk. 2, ch. 29: “But what shall I say of the expounders of the divine Scriptures who have flourished in the catholic church, how they did not try to turn this to other meanings, because they were steadfast in the most ancient and most vigorous faith and were not moved by the new error? If I wanted to collect these and make use of their testimony, it would both be too long, and I would perhaps appear to have encroached more than I should have on the canonical authors, from whom we must not be turned aside.” In Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum, Bk. 4, ch. 8, Augustine says: “Not as though the authority of any disputation should be equated with the canonical books but in order that those who believe that the holy fathers say a certain thing may be reminded how the catholic teachers followed the divine oracles concerning these matters before the new idle talk of the heretics; and that they may know that the true and anciently founded catholic faith is being defended by us against the recent audacity and destruction of the Pelagians.” The other thing which we hold concerning the authority of the fathers we have also learned from the fathers themselves. Augustine, in Letter No. 19, to Jerome, says: “Other writers (besides the canonical) I read in such a way that, no matter how great they are in holiness or learning, I do not consider a thing true because they have thought it so but because they have been able to persuade me either through other canonical authors or by some credible reason that they do not depart from the truth.” In Letter No. 111 he says: “We ought not to consider the reasonings of any individuals, be they ever so catholic and praiseworthy, as we do the canonical writings, so that we would not be permitted, without injury to the honor that is due these men, to disapprove and reject something in their writings, if perhaps we have found that they thought otherwise than truth is, as it has been understood with divine help either by others or by us. I deal with the writings of others as I want others to deal with mine.” In Contra Cresconium, Bk. 2, ch. 31, he says: “The canon of the canonical books was drawn up that we might, according to them, freely judge concerning other writings of either believers or unbelievers.” In ch. 32 he says: “I do not hold the letters of Cyprian as canonical, but I evaluate them by the canonical ones; and what in them agrees with the authority of the divine Scriptures I receive with his compliments, but what does not agree I reject with his permission.” (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part I, pp. 258-59).

…statements that were more oratorical and extravagant than pious and correct rang out in the churches concerning free will, minimizing original sin and extolling the efficacy of the Law and the perfection of the righteousness of works, even of works of supererogation, and the righteousness of faith lay there in obscurity. Then God, in order to open the sleepy eyes of the doctors of the church to look more diligently at the teaching of Paul, permitted the church to be so disrupted by Pelagianism that it appeared that the very foundations of the entire Christian religion were about to collapse. At this point Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine recognized what they had not noticed before, namely that while they themselves and the other ancient fathers had been so preoccupied with stirring up zeal for good works, they had made many statements which did not agree with the analogy of faith. Augustine retracted many such statements. Jerome in his Dialogus adv. Pelagianos condemned many statements which we can read not only in the writings of the ancients but also in the very books of Jerome himself. Thus in an indirect way God again restored some light to the doctrine of the free remission of sins and other articles which otherwise would have been completely lost in the progress of time. Augustine states in regard to Psalm 101 that the pagans condemned the teaching of the church by saying, “You have destroyed discipline and perverted the morals of the human race by giving to men an opportunity for repentance and by promising immunity for all sins; and thus men do evil, secure in the fact that all things will be forgiven them when they have been converted.” Such objections some people tried to refute by changing the doctrine so that they restricted grace and in hyperbolic language extolled other teachings to the skies. But Augustine, after he learned his lesson from the Pelagian controversy, came to realize that the church was not being helped by this kind of thinking and that the truth was only being perverted and ultimately lost. For just as they should not do evil that good may come of it, so they should not teach falsely in order that the truth might be defended and retained. Augustine is correct and truthful when he says in De Civitate Dei, 16.2, “Many points pertaining to the catholic faith have been stirred up by the cunning trouble making of heretics, so that we have had to defend these points against them, consider more carefully, define more clearly, and preach more powerfully. The question has been raised by the adversary, and the opportunity is present for better learning.” This point is certainly most true in church controversies. (Loci Theologici [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1989], Vol. II, pp. 472-73)

Among all the ancient writers there is indeed frequent mention of the sign of the cross. …at the time of Tertullian and afterward the Christians with their fingers formed a transverse figure like a cross in the air, and in this way identified themselves. It was…a profession and reminder that they believed in Christ crucified, and that they were placing all their hope and confidence in Him.” (Examination of the Council of Trent, Part IV [Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1986], p. 94)